Living off the Land

The other day, I came very close to being a Balkan version of Laura Ingalls. Or, rather, a Vietnamese-American, 33-year-old, 21st century, Montenegrin version of America's favorite pioneer girl from the Little House on the Prairie books. So, I guess not so close. But, I did go for a nice, long hike up the hills past the Hippo Hostel to a natural spring, where I drank my fill of the cool, clear water, and then meandered my way back down, picking wild blackberries and fresh figs along the way. I ate and drank from the land that day.

The pioneer party included me, Nadya, our neighbor, Jelena, and her mother, Sonja, along with Travis, an Australian guest staying at the hostel. We hiked for maybe an hour up the hill and the view along the trail was spectacular the entire way up. As we climbed, we could see the entire town of Budva, Old Town in the distance, a big swath of the Adriatic Sea, and Sveti Nikola island, a wedge-shaped mass of land 1 nautical mile offshore. And, we passed old stone ruins of houses that have stood on these hillsides for centuries now. Some of the ruins had been incorporated into lovely modern houses, sprawling across the hillside, and some of them had chickens penned inside. There was a small church, rebuilt and looking quite sharp, with headstones in the graveyard that were labeled in Cyrillic and which dated back at least a couple hundred years. There were lots of trees and fences made with twigs and barb wire. It felt like I was hiking Point Reyes at times.

The natural spring that we drank from has been tamed, put into a wall and piped out now in 3 faucet-looking things that continuously run, which kills some of the romance of the spring itself, but I guess makes it less muddy around where the water comes out of the rock. And, after drinking our fill of spring water, we picked juicy, perfectly ripe blackberries from bushes all alongside the hiking trail on the hill. We ate as much as we collected to bring home with us. And, the figs. Figs are in season now too, so there was an assault on all the fig trees that we encountered on the road home. Jelena, the scorchin' hot blond bombshell and her mom, with long sticks that they found in the woods, whacked at the high branches of the fig trees to get the fruit down. We all had fig seeds stuck in our teeth by the end of the afternoon, but there were no complaints. We came home to a nice cup of Turkish coffee, some good conversation, and playing with a kitten that Nadya and Sonja found trapped in a barn up in the hills, which Jelena insisted on adopting.

There will never be better-tasting blackberries or sweeter figs or clearer mountain spring water in my life than on this afternoon in Montenegro.